Hacker News Reader

Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

> I don't think there is any company in the FAANG that is an altruistic enterprise

I feel like Google started that way, and then lost its way sometime between 2009-2012.

Projects like Google Scholar, Google Books, Google Summer of Code, Google Reader, Google Open Source, Google.org, and pulling out of China didn't really have much of a business justification, but were simply something good that they could do. Unfortunately they're a public company, and when you start struggling to meet analysts' (perpetually inflating) estimates, being good - or at least not evil - is usually the first thing on the chopping block.

View on HN

Google never figured out how to make serious bank outside of the marketing department.

The fact that they kept the wheels on as long as they did, I gotta give them some respect for that. But they were always destined to end up being amoral at best and a cesspool at worst.

If you are starting a company and think you want to be proud of it for the rest of your life, sell a real product, not your users.

If by "marketing department" you mean "advertising business" you would be correct. But I am skeptical you meant that.

Yeah I mean the advertising business. I was feeling a little salty.

Not true: they make billions from cloud services.

Re: “you are the product” meme. I guess it’s a mechanism for raising awareness of privacy violation, but I really don’t like it. If you were literally the product, you would be a slave. You’re not. What they sell is your attention.

A big reason for not liking “you are the product” memes is it misses the key aspect of manipulation, which phrases like “the attention economy” capture. You are being manipulated into giving up more of your time and attention.

Honestly, that seems like splitting hairs to me.

I don't think that it has anything to do with altruism. Back then, it was not the right time to optimise for profit as new and exciting things were happening daily, it was time to explore not to exploit.

These days the exciting things are happening in other areas, so for the Internet giants, it's time to optimize for profit.

> it was time to explore not to exploit.

Is that not a pretty good definition of not being evil. IMO it is still the time to explore not exploit, even if that's not what they're doing.

Also, as a smaller player, they stood more to benefit from open source projects (Android and Chrome) and open standards (the web and email). Now that they're on top, the most rational strategy is to secure their position by destroying the bridges they used to get there, locking down those open technologies.

In other words, the most rational strategy is to become evil.

Correct. Which is why pure capitalism is broken.

> and then lost its way sometime between 2009-2012.

Tahrir Square was the high water mark of the old school techies. The failure of tech to effect real and lasting change really hasn't been understood by the techies, even still. That optimism about the future and tech's role in it, is gone.

Based on discussions I’ve had with Egyptians, Facebook was used to track down dissidents after the counter-revolution that brought Sisi into power. Not sure if it was Tahrir-era posts that got them into trouble, or criticism of the Sisi government.

The only lasting legacy of social media’s role in the Arab spring seems to have been inflating the self-worth of high level execs, and blinding Obama-era officials to the way these sites could be turned into tools of disinformation and repression.

"The only lasting legacy of social media’s role in the Arab spring seems to have been inflating the self-worth of high level execs"

When the media talked about the "Twitter revolution" I still remember thinking that there were people risking their lives on the streets and how ridiculous it was that some social media guys drinking lattes in their offices got the credit.

When you spend enough time in the future, you forget all the shitty things about the past that tech has changed and only notice the problems that stand out today. Not sure if you're specifically referencing Tahrir Square with your second sentence, but tech has definitely led to real, lasting and immensely positive change worldwide.

Oh yeah, but I think all the wind went out of the sails after Tahrir Square.

Before, there was such optimisim about tech. Nothing could stop it. Everything would be just better.

Look, the oppressed are rising up together! Look, medicine is getting better! Look, we're talking at each other, not shooting and hurting!

The arab spring was the high point, the proofed pudding.

After the failures there, sure, yes, tech has helped, has advanced the world. But that optimisim that was in Tahrir Square never came back. FB was a way to talk with each other and be a 3rd space, now it's a Skinner box. Wikipedia was the nascent Enclycopedia Galactica, now it's just mostly good and sometimes suspicious. Google wasn't evil, now it works with China to make Orwell sigh.

Things are chugging along, yes. But before people actually thought they could change the world for the better, now tech just has mortgages.

Google had been receiving shit from people for violating privacy since they had the novel idea to release a free email service that scanned your emails to deliver you targeted ads. The consequent centralization of email (ISP provided email pretty much died after) was subsequently used to allow the NSA to scan a huge amount of peoples personal information.

I think in the last few years is when things tipped to me distrusting Google more than the boogeyman of older times - Microsoft.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com